Hugo Chavez came to power 20 years ago – and proved that the socialist dream can turn into a nightmare

From being a once prosperous country, Venezuela is now an economic basket case run by a despot

Chavez's economic policies involved a sweeping nationalisation, and he used sky-high oil prices in the 2000s to boost spending (EPA)

It is 20 years since Hugo Chavez became the president of Venezuela.

Originally elected on the back of a populist wave, with a charismatic personality, his legacy of 14 years in office has been to drive the country into the abyss.

In the 1970s, Venezuela was a wealthy country. With huge oil reserves, the capital Caracas once had more French restaurants than New York.

Born from a poor family, Chavez became a military officer before founding the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement.

Chavez was imprisoned in 1992 for leading a coup. After being pardoned two years later, he went on to form the Fifth Republic Movement and won four presidential elections.

In typical champagne socialist style, when suffering from cancer he flew to Cuba for medical treatment before passing away in 2013.

His economic policies involved a sweeping nationalisation, and he used sky-high oil prices in the 2000s to boost spending on health and education, food and housing. Initially the results were positive as income inequality was reduced, but then the wheels fell off the bus.

Attempts to spend his way out of a deficit and price controls saw inflation spiral. His supporters abroad were Ken Livingstone and Fidel Castro. Livingstone even did a deal with Chavez to buy Venezuelan oil to power London buses when he was mayor of London.

Corruption was rife under his rule, with some estimating that he had amassed a fortune of $1bn from plundering the country’s oil reserves.

Since his death, his successor Nicolas Maduro has made a bad situation much worse. Inflation has spiralled to 80,000 percent, and 90 per cent of Venezuelans are estimated to live in poverty.

Women are giving up babies for adoption with both food and medicine in short supply. People are buying rotten food at the market in order to survive. An estimated 3 million Venezuelans have fled as refugees.

Maduro still has support from Iran and Russia but has become an international pariah and the US has put sanctions on oil exports. He has rendered the elected National Assembly essentially redundant by setting up his own version stuffed with his cronies and relatives. Opposition leaders have been arrested. The military has been bought off with promotions.

From being a once prosperous country, Venezuela is now an economic basket case run by a despot. Venezuelan friends of mine no longer feel safe enough to return to visit ageing parents – parents who struggle to get a passport, as Maduro wants to make it as hard as possible for them to leave. Chavez was once a darling of the left. Now he’s an embarrassment.

His legacy is a warning of what happens when, inevitably, the socialist dream turns out to be a nightmare of epic proportions. Let’s hope that unlike the princess in Sleeping Beauty, Venezuela doesn’t have to wait 100 years to be woken up.